The Diabetic Foot Research in Arabs’ Countries

Abstract

Objective: To review all the studies on diabetic\rfoot disorders (DFDs) that were published on the PubMed? site aiming\rto identify the contributions of the different Arabs’ countries in the world scientific\rliterature on this topic. Methods: The PubMed? site was searched using different\rkey words for searching all the abstracts on Diabetes mellitus (DM) and DFDs published\rfrom Arabs’ League countries (n = 22). For this review, the 22 countries were classified\rinto 3 groups: Group 1 (G1): Gulf Council Countries (GCC) countries (n = 6), Group\r2 (G2): African Arabs’ countries (n = 10), Group 3 (G3): Asian and/or Eastern Mediterranean\rArabs’ countries (n = 6). All the abstracts on DM coming from all of the 22 Arabs’\rcountries were initially reviewed to locate the ones related to DFDs’ management.\rAll of the articles related to DFDs were reviewed by the senior author. A publication\rindex was created to allow a comparison between the productivity of various countries\rand correlate that to the population number. Results: By April 2012, a total of 906 articles were published\ron DM, out of them 115 (11.6%) were related to DFDs. The largest number of DM/DFDs\rresearch came from G1 countries (n = 437/51) followed by G2 (n = 307/38) and finally\rG3 (n = 162/26). The percentages of the studies related to DFDs were therefore:\r11.6%, 12.3% and 20.6% respectively. Saudi Arabia was the top on the list\rof all studied countries with 31 studies related to DFDs out of the 187 on DM (16.5%). Conclusion: More research on DFDs is needed in most of the Arabs’ countries particularly\rthose in the GCC region which reported very high prevalence rates and are expected\rto hold these rates for the coming decades. Also, special attention is needed for\rthose low-income Arabs’ countries that had no contributions in DFDs’ research.